War for the Woods
2023 | 44 minutes
Directed by Geoff Morrison
One registration gets you access to all 8 films. Your password will be emailed to you and works for the full festival, April 17–26.
Thirty years after historic logging protests on Vancouver Island, the battle to protect old growth forests is still raging. War for the Woods follows a new generation’s campaign against logging that once again has captured the attention of Canadians, including Stephanie Kwetásel’wet Wood, a Sḵwx̱wú7mesh journalist living and writing in North Vancouver, who reports on Indigenous rights and the natural world.
The documentary follows Wood’s journey to understand how B.C.’s old growth forests have all but disappeared in this troubling time of climate change, and how Indigenous communities are trying to save what’s left.
Thirty years after the historic blockades in Clayoquot Sound, Wood travels to Tla-o-qui-aht territory in Clayoquot Sound, BC where the protests took place, meeting Tribal Park Guardians, community leaders and others to learn more about the legacy of these actions and to find out whether Indigenous and environmentalist protesters won the battle but lost the war for old growth forests.
They are exploring new land use visions and models of Indigenous-led conservation, including phasing out old growth logging altogether, but as communities struggle to balance environmental stewardship with meeting their economic needs, the hurdles to protecting these ancient forests have grown ever more complicated. With an industry that prioritizes profits over the health of the forests, and precious time left to save these intact ecosystems, the stakes in today's War for the Woods could not be higher.
For many Canadians, their introduction to clearcut logging came from news reports about the Clayoquot Sound protests back in 1993, known as the War in the Woods, when some 12,000 people showed up on the remote west coast of Vancouver Island to join the blockades. While much of the area was spared, elsewhere in B.C., clearcutting remained the status quo, and old growth forests have continued to fall.
Today, precious little old growth remains, and First Nations and environmentalists are again taking a stand. This new War for the Woods has captured the attention of Canadians once again, including Stephanie Kwetásel'wet Wood, a journalist for The Narwhal who reports on Indigenous rights and the natural world.